Towards an Understanding of Anglo-Saxon Stone Names

Garnets are ubiquitous in the material culture of Anglo-Saxon England. They appear on buckles, brooches, shoulder clasps, and sieve spoons. They once lined the wings of a dragon on what is possibly the most famous Anglo-Saxon artefact, the helmet from the Sutton Hoo ship burial. Their beauty was, perhaps, imitated in ink and vellum in images which sought to recreate the beauty of jewels on manuscript.

And yet, we know of no Old English word for ‘garnet’. The thesaurus of Old English lists none, and Kitson offers simply that ‘we may readily believe that a contemporary would have admired one of the Sutton Hoo garnets… as “þone readan stan”’, ‘that red stone’. Or would they, on the other hand, have referred to it simply as a ‘carbuncle’, the biblical red stone – described as ‘like a burning coal’ – which is so often viewed by scholars as a catch-all term for any vivid red stone, primarily garnet itself?

Nor do we know enough about what connotations jewels generally, or particular gems held for the Anglo-Saxons. What were the connotations of carbuncle, and can this help us understand how the name could apply to garnet? Why was garnet so prominent in the material culture?

This study seeks to address these questions through a twofold approach. First, it will update R. M. Garrett’s 1909 survey of references to gems in Anglo-Saxon texts. This expanded corpus will hopefully shed greater light on Old English stone name formation. It will also take a new look at the meanings and connotations of stones in Anglo-Saxon lapidary texts (both Old English and Latin), with a particular focus on biblical commentaries and the way in which Anglo-Saxon authors and translators approached and reworked classical material. These analyses will hopefully lead to a new understanding of the socio-linguistic place of garnet in Anglo-Saxon England, to complement the studies conducted by Stefan Albrecht, Jörg Drauschke, Borayin Larios, and Kerstin Sobkowiak.